What do you want to find?

Myrra Leifsdóttir

Language, lingua, the tongue, the mother tongue. The tongue that licks its wounds and tastes the sweat of a loved one’s body. The tongue that seeks the mother’s breast for nurture. The tongue that is the body, flesh, muscle, mucus membrane, the tip of the vertebrae. A tongue that rinsed its fur and loved its small ones. Is it the same tongue which was separated and isolated systematically, whilst the mind reached out to distinguish itself from the other? The tongue that articulated the words “a monster, different from me” and by that drew a border around the Self? Do we treasure a peripheral language beyond the tongue? Does it derive from the vertebrae as our peripheral nervous system? How do we communicate our thoughts, sensations, origins and futures in a language too vibrant, delicate, absurd, wacky, sad and complex to be expressed through the spoken and written language? Is the written and spoken language not only the tip, of a much larger body of communication?

I am interested in the human paradox of being of nature and yet without. What is language other than a bodily action? What is a mind other than a bodily situation of flesh and blood? Synchronized heartbeats are a form of communication that cannot be accomplished through written or spoken word. Why do we put so much weight on articulated communication? Is it because it is the only one we feel we can control and therefore identify ourselves with?

I seek my inspiration in the liminal spaces that are not separated. Where mind and body merge, evolution and spirit, science and art, nature and culture. Where time is not chronological, where evil is also good and where naivety and intelligence is the same thing, silly and serious. The monster is within us all to point a finger at or to recognize and embrace.